An etude that people love and hate

Source: Liberation Daily

Recently, an "Etude of the New Coronavirus" created by American composer Jeff Depauli has swept the Internet. This daunting etude fully and ultimately expresses the wide range of the piano. The performer's dazzling scraping and ornamental techniques when playing seem to be a dialogue between life and death. Some viewers who have watched the video of the "New Coronavirus Etude" playing the song, the song is like taking a wet wipe and wiping the piano 3 times, and the disinfection object is a well-known Steinway piano.

Throughout the history of music, etudes are not synonymous with boredom, and among the vast arrays of etudes, there are some memorable and well-known works.

The first to systematically compose piano etudes was Bach. Many of the preludes in his 12-year-old piano collection have the nature of "etudes".

The Hungarian composer Liszt also systematically wrote a number of piano etudes, the most famous of which is the "12 Super Technique Piano Etudes", which is a daunting and difficult repertoire in the history of the piano, representing the ivory spire of piano playing technique. The fifth of these, "Ghost Fire", was once called "the hardest etude in the world" by the Russian pianist and composer Rachmaninoff. "Harmony of the Night" is also a very famous song in this collection of etudes. The work begins slowly, as if telling a story. After that, the music progresses layer by layer, returns layer by layer, and finally ends very calmly, which is still unfinished.

Liszt's Bell was written in 1834. According to records, after listening to Paganini's concert in 1831, Liszt was amazed by his superb composition and performance skills, and was determined to become Paganini on the piano. This world-famous "Bell" adopts a three-part body song style, which has the characteristics of variations and melodies due to the use of multiple thematic variations and repetitions.

Chopin composed a total of 27 etudes in his lifetime, which are not only targeted skill exercises, but also have deep ideological connotations, like short musical poems. Chopin's etudes are often seen as a "revolution" in the history of piano music.

Chopin's 1831 Etude in C minor, known as the Revolutionary Etude, is one of his most widely circulated etudes, and the whole song is full of grief and indignation, which profoundly reflects Chopin's mood after the fall of Warsaw and the failure of the uprising.

Etudes in C minor, also known as Riptide Etudes, is an etude for the purpose of practicing accents. The right hand of this work is very complex, and at the same time there are many big jumps in the left hand. This etude is played very frequently in major piano competitions, and its explosive power and speed requirements for the fingers are extremely high, requiring the player to play with the same enthusiasm as fire.

The Winter Wind Etude is one of the most difficult and lengthy etudes of Chopin's etudes. What it trains is the sensitivity, speed and accuracy of the player's finger touches. Due to the large size, the endurance of the fingers is also a test. Some people think that these fast sound groups are like the scene of the winter wind rolling up the dead leaves and dancing in the air, so they are named "Winter Wind", also known as "Dead Leaves".

(Chen Junjun, comprehensive)